Milford, OH, July 26, 2010 – ITI TranscenData, the product data interoperability business of International TechneGroup Incorporated (ITI), announced today that it will be using its presence at two industry events later this year to showcase the key role CADfix, its flagship CAD translation and repair software, has played in an exciting new engineering project. CADfix has played a fundamental part in the development of the BLOODHOUND Supersonic Car (SSC), a car that has been designed to smash the land-speed record by clocking more than 1,000 miles per hour. ITI TranscenData will be explaining the role of CADfix in the design and analysis phase of the project on its stand at the Siemens PLM Europe conference in Linz, Austria from October 18 - 20, where the BLOODHOUND team will also be giving a keynote presentation, and at Aero Engineering 2010 in Birmingham, UK from September 29 - 30.

The BLOODHOUND project, billed as an engineering adventure for the 21st century, is the brainchild of Richard Noble OBE, who has set out to build a car capable of achieving 1,000mph. If BLOODHOUND SSC achieves its target it will mark the greatest incremental increase in the history of the world land speed record – currently standing at just over 763mph – and will also see a car exceeding the low-altitude speed record for aircraft.

CADfix removes the barriers that prevent the effective reuse of CAD geometry in downstream applications by providing an extensive set of geometry manipulation tools for importing and repairing CAD data, and then conditioning and exporting it in the most suitable form for reuse in the receiving software package. It also features a number of specific tools designed to refine 3D geometry for use in mesh-based analysis tools, where, for instance, small “sliver” surfaces can cause unnecessary mathematical complications.

CADfix played a crucial role in the BLOODHOUND SSC design phase, acting as a vital link between the Bristol-based design team and the aerodynamics team, based at Swansea University. The master design was created in NX, from Siemens PLM, while simulation of the car was undertaken in FLITE, a specialist computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tool developed at the university, versions of which are in use at leading European aerospace manufacturers.

“FLITE is a dedicated meshing and CFD solving application, and it’s very good at what it does,” explains Professor Oubay Hassan, who was awarded an MBE for his work on Noble’s first supersonic car, Thrust SSC. “But while we’re experts on engineering software we haven’t evolved a CAD interface. In order to work with the geometry coming out of the design team we’d have had to write a new converter or input it all by hand. And given the tight development schedule this would have been too much of a challenge.”

CADfix provided the vital link. Without it Professor Hassan estimates the analysis would have taken an extra 12 months and the project would have had no chance of meeting its tight design window.

Andy Chinn, Business Development Manager of ITI TranscenData comments: “Efficient CAD and CAE integration is a major issue for any engineering process that relies on computational analysis, particularly where time is of the essence. Experienced engineers are an expensive commodity and they often find themselves spending too much time building and meshing analysis models, instead of focusing on interpreting results and running design optimization iterations.

“We have been developing engineering data interoperability solutions for many years that focus on effective CAD to CAE time compression and were delighted when the BLOODHOUND project approached us regarding the use of our CADfix software,” he adds. “For leading edge research and design projects such as BLOODHOUND SSC, it is vital that the focus is on those parts of the analysis process that contribute directly to innovation. We are extremely proud of CADfix’s contribution to the BLOODHOUND design and analysis phase and, ultimately, to the future success of the whole project.”

ITI TranscenData will be explaining CAD/CAE integration in detail at Siemens PLM World 2010, taking place at the Design Center in Linz, Austria, from October 18 - 20. A keynote presentation will also be made by members of the BLOODHOUND team on October 19. ITI TranscenData will also be exhibiting at Aero Engineering 2010, a major showcase for all aspects of aerospace design, development, manufacturing and integration, taking place at the NEC in Birmingham, UK, from September 29 - 30.

Retired, application interactions CEO July 27, 2010Reviewed by 'this is bob'Well Writen. The missing link in inventions and software products is the ability to find a need and fill it. as this article shows ITI's marketing has it all togother